What is the Google Mobile First Index?

Question

Some time ago Google announced a change in the form of indexing that will do, but what change is that? What will change in the life of the programmer? How this transition will be made?

Answer 1

Before you despair, bear in mind some things.

First, for now this is a practice of Google, it is not a general rule, even Google representing 90% or more of the search market in Brazil this is a practice of the company and not of W3C, so it does not necessarily have to do directly with the developers, mainly for developing systems etc.

Mobile Site (m) vs Mobile First

Keep in mind that here we have different concepts! The Mobile First would roughly be a site developed primarily as a focus on mobile, it would actually be a mobile site that adapts to large screens, not a site made for large screens that adapts to small screens. Perhaps when it comes to developing the main point is that the medias queries use min-width and not max-width https://www.todoespacoonline.com/w/2015/03/como-escrever-seu-css-para-projetos-mobile-first/

/* este estilo aplica-se a partir de 0px até 900px */
body {
      background: red;
} 

/* este estilo aplica-se a partir de 900px em diante */
@media ( min-width: 900px ) {
  body {
    background: green;
  }
}

Already one Mobile site, or SITE M, is a "new" site, or is not a single site that adapts the width of the screen, it actually has another URL, other files . html, others . css, etc... Despite a SITE M can have concepts of mobile first it is a different site and would be something like m.example.com.br and the other example.com.br

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/">
<link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="https://m.example.com/">

---

Recommendations from Google

• Your mobile site needs to present the same content as your computer site.
• Structured data must be present in both versions of your website.
• Metadata must be present in both versions of the site.
• Check both versions of your website on Search Console to ensure that you have access to the data and messages of both.
• Check the separate URL links.
• Check if the directives of robots.txt
• Check if you have the link elements rel=canonical and rel=alternate correct

Source: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing

---

SEO

See what Google says:

On Google, there is a preference for mobile-optimized content in the indexing process.

So from a Google SEO point of view this implies that if your competitors already own the mobile version, they can get ahead of you. That is to say Google tends to give preference to return in their search results of Sites type M.

This does not necessarily mean that your unique Responsive site will no longer be indexed by Crawler of them, just means that it can improve the rankings of M Sites in the search results. Including the SERP may vary depending on whether the search was made from a Mobile or Desktop device. SERP: https://www.significados.com.br/serp/

Source: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing

---

Questioning

Point to think... Why have two site if we can have only one M Site, but it adapts to the Desktop, having only one URL m.example.com.br. How would the validation of the bot Google? What would be the result of SERP if the site has only one version M?

Answer 2

In relation to web design, there is already a long time the idea of mobile first to create the layout and design, this because, today, the pages are accessed mostly by mobile devices, so first creates the site for mobile and, after, desktop

If this already exists in the creation of the site, why not in its indexing would be different? Basically, the Mobile First Index is to index web pages by their mobile version. This change will be gradual, there are already sites that are being indexed in this way, in the future everyone has gone through this, but it is still a long way to go, it does not mean that you should not worry, it is important to be aware of these changes and put them into practice

An important point is that the mobile page is as complete as possible, several websites have a full desktop and mobile version with lean content, which can harm indexing

https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing

https://resultadosdigitais.com.br/blog/google-mobile-first-index/amp/